December 9, 2008 by jessicaruano
Looks like efforts from the arts community actually made a difference! A group of councillors from the City of Ottawa (not including Larry O’Brien) brought and passed a package motion that results in a 4.9-per-cent property tax increase and avoids serious program cuts.
Find out the full details in the Ottawa Citizen coverage.
Thoughts? Opinions? Do you agree with this decision?
Personally, I’m rather amused that Larry O’Brien has so little say in the decisions made by his council.
Jessica Ruano
ruano.jessica[at]gmail.com
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Yay! Great work Jessica on continuing to be a voice for the arts in Ottawa–obviously this pays off!
It sounds like a good thing for arts, and it sounds like they saved more than just culture that shouldn’t be cut (i.e. bus routes, although if it was a bus route not being used then maybe it’s OK)… but deferring infrastructure renewal spending at this time doesn’t sound like a good idea. Going into a period of deflation and lower commodity and energy costs seems like the ideal time to renew infrastructure.
I know we don’t need to go to the citizens for everything, and that we have to trust the elected people to do what’s right because they have far more information than we do, but… I do wonder if you’d offered the choice between a 5% tax increase with fewer spending cuts and no tax increase with more spending cuts, what the result would have been . On the other hand, you could apply the same thinking to infrastructure spending and an organics program — a lot of people would vote for lower taxes and then just complain (loudly) when the bridge they use to get to work every day collapsed one morning :)
To be fair, I believe that when the city amalgamated they actually rolled back taxes which is part of the reason we’ve ended up in this mess year after year. It seems from the article that this increase will actually help them get back on track with inflation increases in future years. If that’s the case then I think this increase is completely reasonable.
I think the cut threats are really just their way to ensure that they don’t have to INCREASE spending. That way everyone’s just so happy that the cuts were dropped that no one has any energy left to lobby for new funding…
I haven’t got my head around the whole package (it’s not my city after all!) but as far as prevented cuts, potential increases and the wearing down of arts community lobbying goes:
From the get-go, there was parallel to the anti-cuts movement a strong sense which fairly often came up in messaging–and which has clearly got support from certain members on council–that it is not acceptable to threaten cuts and force the arts community to justify its existence year after year. The behind-O’Brien’s-back approach to solving this reflects a negative judgment on his approach, including other things creating an unwarranted debate on misguided cuts.
Meaningful, sustained increases will probably have to wait for another time, but the fight shouldn’t end quite yet. We’re all tired, but there is still a fresh wound over the incompetence and misguidedness of the budget process and its lack of priorities, and the bad faith of threatening cuts contradicting results of past debate and a supposed long-term strategy of support. There will be councilors quite ready to work to prevent this annual fiasco. The arts community would be well advised to look for any window to contribute to this work, despite all the fatigue that fighting this last round of threatened cuts has invoked.
But I know very little. Talk to Peter Honeywell–he’s the expert.
Not just that…. looks like they also re-committed to the Arts Investment Strategy! Woot!
I’m just desperately afraid of hearing someone say, ‘you darn artists forced an increase in our taxes.’ I’d like to argue that these programs benefit our community as a whole… but it’s difficult to have a reasonable conversation when money is involved.